Re:South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get...
by 32163704 on Friday July 22, 2022 @11:04AM
(#32192667)
>and lower courts can and do refuse to enforce laws on that basis
Courts don't enforce laws, but I get what you mean. I have no confidence whatsoever that appellate courts will do anything about these laws. There has been a willful, deliberate, strategic stacking of the judiciary starting in the early 2000s to get us to this place.
Sorry to repeat myself, but we really can't all sit back and reference our civics books as if this system is still functioning to protect us against these fucked up laws. It's over. Stare decisis is now at the whim of the political affiliation of the courts.
No, they aren't. Unconstitutional laws are unconstitutional ab initio, and lower courts can and do refuse to enforce laws on that basis, and the Supreme Court may never even get to rule on them since appeal to the Supreme Court is not by right; the farthest that cases in the federal system get by right is the Court of Appeals.